Amin Maalouf - Samarkand

With a curiosity marked by recklessness, we headed down toward the source of the noise only to see, at about a hundred metres distance, a vociferous crowd marching forward. There was dust, smoke, a forest of clubs, rifles and glowing torches as well as shouts which I could not understand as they were in Azeri, the Turkish language of the people of Tabriz. Baskerville did his best to translate: ‘Death to the constitution’, ‘Death to parliament’, ‘Death to atheists’, ‘Long live the Shah’. Dozens of townspeople were running about in all directions. An old man was dragging a stupefied goat at the end of a rope. A woman stumbled and her son, hardly six years old, helped her to get up and supported her as she fled limping with him.

We ourselves hurried towards our meeting place. On the way a group of young men were erecting a barricade made of two tree trunks upon which they were piling up in completely random fashion tables, bricks, chairs, boxes and barrels. We were recognized and allowed to pass, but we were advised to go quickly with the words ‘they are coming here’, ‘they want to burn down the quarter’, ‘they have sworn to massacre the sons of Adam.’

In the anjuman building Fazel was surrounded by forty or fifty men and he was the only one not carrying a rifle. He only had an Austrian Mannlicher pistol whose sole use was to point out to all around him the positions they should take up. He was calm, less anxious than the evening before, in the state of calm which a man of action feels when the unbearable waiting is over.

‘You see!’ he told us with an imperceptibly triumphant tone of voice. ‘Everything which Panoff stated was true. Colonel Liakhov has carried out his coup d’état. He has declared himself military governor of Teheran and has imposed a curfew there. Since this morning supporters of the constitution have become fair game in the capital and all other cities, starting with Tabriz.’

‘It has all happened so quickly!’ Howard marvelled.

‘It was the Russian consul who was notified of the launch of the coup by telegram and he then informed the religious chiefs of Tabriz this morning. They in turn summoned their supporters to assemble at mid-day in the Deveshi, the Quarter of the Camel-drivers, whence they spread out through the city, first heading for the home of one of my journalist friends, Ali Meshedi. They dragged him out of his house accompanied by the screams of his wife and mother, cut his throat and severed his right hand and then left him in a pool of blood. But have no fear — Ali will be avenged before nightfall.’

His voice betrayed him. He managed a respite of a second and drew a deep breath before continuing:

‘If I have come to Tabriz, it is because I know this city will resist. The ground we are standing on is still ruled by the constitution. This is now the seat of parliament, the seat of the legitimate government. It will be a fine battle but we will end up winning. Follow me!’

We followed him, along with half a dozen of his supporters. He led us toward the garden, and walked around the house to a wooden staircase whose extremities disappeared in thick foliage. We went up to the roof, through a passageway, up a few more steps and then came to a room with thick walls and small yet potentially deadly windows. Fazel invited us to take a look: we were overhanging the most vulnerable entrance to the quarter which at present was blocked by a barricade. Behind it there were about twenty men, kneeling to the ground with their rifles aimed.

‘There are others,’ Fazel explained. Just as determined. They are blocking all the entrances to the quarter. If the pack comes, they will be given the welcome they deserve.’

The pack, as he called them, was not far off. They must have stopped on the way to set fire to two or three houses belonging to sons of Adam, but they were relentless and the noise and shots grew closer.

Suddenly we were seized by a kind of shudder. However much we expected them and were sheltered by a wall, the spectacle of a wild crowd calling out death and coming straight at one is probably the most frightening experience one can have.

Instinctively I whispered:

‘How many are they?’

‘A thousand, a thousand five hundred at the most,’ Fazel replied in a loud voice which was clear and reassuring.

Then he added, like an order:

‘Now it is up to us to frighten them.’

He asked his aides to give us rifles. Howard and I exchanged a quasi-amused glance. We felt the weight of those cold objects with both fascination and distaste.

‘Position yourselves at the windows,’ Fazel yelled. ‘And shoot at anyone who approaches. I have to leave you. I have a surprise up my sleeve for these barbarians.’

He had hardly gone out before the battle started although to speak of it as such is most probably an exaggeration. The rioters arrived. They were a vociferous and bird-brained mob and their forward ranks threw themselves against the barricade as if it were an obstacle course. The sons of Adam fired one salvo and then another. A dozen of the assailants were downed and the rest fell back. Only one managed to scale the barricade, but that was only to be run through by a bayonet. He gave out a horrible cry of agony and I turned my eyes away.

Most of the demonstrators wisely stayed back, making do with shouting out hoarsely the same slogan: ‘Death!’. Then a squad was thrown anew into an assault on the barricade — this time with a little more method, that is to say that they were firing on the defenders and the windows from which the shots had come. A son of Adam hit on the forehead was the only loss in his camp. His companion’s salvoes were already starting to mow down the first lines of the assailants.

The offensive tailed off, they fell back and discussed a new strategy noisily. They were regrouping for a new attempt when a rumbling sound shook the quarter. A shell had just landed in the middle of the rioters, causing carnage followed by headlong flight. The defenders then raised their rifles and shouted: ‘Mashrouteh! Mashrouthe!’ — Constitution! From the other side of the barricade we could make out dozens of corpses stretched out on the ground. Howard whispered:

‘My weapon is still cold. I have not fired a single cartridge. What about you?’

‘Nor have I.’

‘To have someone’s head in my sights, and to press the trigger to kill him …’

Fazel arrived a few moments later in jovial mood.

‘What did you think of my surprise? It was an old French cannon, a de Bange, which was sold to us by an officer in the imperial army. It is on the roof, come and take a look at it! One day soon we shall place it in the middle of the largest square in Tabriz and write underneath it: “This cannon saved the constitution!”’

I found his words too optimistic even though I could not contest the fact that he had won a significant victory in a few minutes. His objective was clear — to maintain a zone where the last Constitutionalists could assemble and find protection, but above all where they could all plan out the steps they were to take.

If someone had told us on that troubled June day that from just a few tangled alleys in the Tabriz bazaar and with our two loads of Lebel rifles and our single de Bange cannon we were going to win back for Persia its stolen freedom, who would have believed it?

Yet that is what happened, but not without the purest of us paying for it with his life.

They were dark days on the history of Khayyam’s country. Was this the promised dawn of the Orient? From Isfahan to Kazvin, from Shiraz to Hamand, the same shouts issued blindly from thousand upon thousand of people: ‘Death! Death!’ Now one had to go into hiding in order to say the words liberty, democracy and justice. The future was no more than a forbidden dream and the Constitutionalists were hunted down on the streets, the meeting rooms of the sons of Adam were laid to waste and their books were thrown into a pile and burnt. Nowhere, throughout the whole of Persia, could the odious spread of violence be checked.